How To Learn To Play Banjo

Hello, my name is Matthew Forbes from the Music Workshop Company. I'm going to take you through how to tune some instruments, how to play them basically and also how to read the notative music form. This is the tenor banjo and is often used in Irish folk music.

This is different to the American five string blue grass banjo. It's played with a plectrums rather than fingers and it's tuned from bottom to top C, G, D and A. Obviously, it has threats but we'll deal with the right hand first.

I have my plectrums between thumb and first finger and I rest my arm on the instrument behind the string so that there's nothing disturbing this sounding area here. It also means that anything with the plectrums comes from the wrist. My wrist can move.

So it's all coming from the wrist. I'm plucking the string about half-way up between the bridge and the end of the sounding gourd here. For the left hand, I tend to have my first finger generally on the second threat.

Now, with the tenor banjo, it's a comfortable reach to go one threat per finger. So the fourth finger is essentially on the fifth threat. When you need the extra notes on the sixth, the best thing to do is to stretch between one and two because it's a lot stronger on the hand to do that.

So you put two threats between one and the two so you can reach the extra one. And that is about it. .